In pharmaceutical environments, a patient may need to fill one or more prescriptions provided to them by one or more physicians. For example, a patient recovering from injuries sustained in an automobile accident may be receiving medical treatment from several medical specialists, including neurologists, internal medicine specialists, ophthalmologists, orthopedists, and dentists. Each specialist may prescribe various medications to help the patient in the recovery process, including pain medications, antibiotics, and/or eye drops. Further, medical personnel may discover that the patient is overdue for immunizations such as tetanus shots or H1N1 shots.
Physicians may ask the patient questions, and may manually scan the patient's medical record to try to determine whether the patient may have any allergies or past history of adverse reactions to certain drugs. The physicians may also try to determine whether there is any family history that might indicate whether any biological relatives of the patient have experienced allergies, reactions, or other conditions that might provide reasons for the current patient to avoid certain drugs. Further, the physicians may try to determine whether the patient has been consuming other drugs or substances that may interact unfavorably with potential newly prescribed drugs or substances.